All Films

Using as a starting point a 1911 ethnographic film by Swedish explorer Erland Nordenskiöld, a Bolivian filmmaker and a Guaraní guide travel together through the forests of southeastern Bolivia with the intention of making a film about the Guaraní people. Each man creates and interprets his own character, walking the thin line between documentary, fiction and performance. The journey not only takes them to the interior of the country but to their own inner selves, as they seek to define their identities within a country undergoing enormous social, political and historical change.

It's Friday night in the capital city of Asunción and the temperature is 40ºC. Víctor, a 17-year-old delivery boy in the bustling Mercado 4, dreams of becoming famous. He's offered a chance to transport seven boxes with unknown contents on his wheelbarrow in exchange for a quick US$100. But what sounds like an easy job soon gets complicated. Something in the boxes is highly coveted and Víctor and his pursuers quickly find themselves caught up in a crime they know nothing about.

Artist Nicolás Rubió begins a painting of his childhood home in France, but he cannot remember its exact dimensions. Fleeing the brutality of the Spanish Civil War, his family found refuge in this tiny village. Now from his studio in Buenos Aires, Nicolás is desperate to evoke and record his memories of that time. This visually breathtaking documentary, beyond merely being a fascinating depiction of a painter and his subject, is a profound exploration into the essence of the creative process itself.

For over 20 years, introverted hardware store owner Roberto (Ricardo Darín of the Oscar-winning The Secret in Their Eyes) has lived virtually shut off from the outside world. Roberto’s orderly yet lonely existence is disrupted when Jun, a young man from China stumbles into his path. Jun has just landed in Buenos Aires in search of his uncle, his only living relative, but does not speak a word of Spanish. Roberto suddenly finds himself the custodian of this stranger as he is unwillingly caught up in Jun’s predicament.

A divorced taxi driver shows up with a black eye at the home of his ex-wife’s new family; he’s been invited to dinner and he desperately wants to reconnect with his young daughter. A professional magician’s car breaks down and he ends up spending an emotionally intense night with a young, widowed toll booth worker. A singer-songwriter serving a lengthy prison sentence is released for one night to perform at a local community centre.

Lately nothing has been going well for Silverio in Veracruz; his attempt to form a cooperative organization has utterly failed, and with this and other frustrations on his back, he decides to do what no Mexican he knows has ever done before: enter the United States as a Cuban refugee. His buddies help him turn his old VW Beetle into an improvised raft—which he names “el Acorazado Jarocho” (The Veracruzan Battleship)—and he sets sail for Miami. Once again, though, things don’t go quite his way.

From the director of Perro come perro comes a dark comedy of gruesome proportions. Salvador is a hardworking farmer who pays little attention to the ruckus in the village caused by the mayoral election. On voting day, he heads out to work as usual, only to stumble upon a pile of corpses, like a human crop circle, dumped in the middle of his cornfield. He rushes to report the horrific discovery, only to find that the authorities are seemingly more interested in protecting their reputations than their citizens.

Pachuca, 1956. Brothers Arturo and Gustavo Martínez leave their hometown in central Mexico with the desire to cross the continent on bicycles. Eighty-two days and 5,600 km later, they arrive in Toronto, not knowing that this journey will change the entire route of their lives. Ever since director Andrea Martínez Crowther can remember, stories of her father and uncle’s trip have formed part of her family’s folklore. Over half a century later, Arturo and Gustavo - now in their 70s - retrace that epic path, in an exploration of memory, the cycles of life and the unavoidable passage of time.

Needing a place to stay after a fight with his wife, a man knocks on his father’s door and is coldly welcomed by an old man and his sole companion, a dog named Whale. In the modest house, the son digs up memories of a missing brother, concealed in old Super 8 reels and LPs. Avanti Popolo approaches themes common to many Latin American countries: military dictatorships and the eternal wait for the return of the exiled and disappeared.